“Do what you want,” he said. “Just be safe and careful.”
Given the choice between fighting with my mom and fighting with me, my dad picked peace with his children. That is how Thomas and I snuck in with our love under the radar. I do not think my dad knew then that Thomas would be the beginning and end of love for me. He just wanted a little hope in his life; that someone would be on his side. Suddenly I wondered if he should have stopped me from giving myself over to Thomas so completely. He probably couldn’t have. Or could he?
“OH, YOU CAN’T STOP a love like that,” said Valka softly.
“No, I guess you can’t,” I said.
ONE NIGHT, a few weeks after I had moved out of the house I had shared with my husband, I came out on the balcony over the diner to look at the moon. It was late, and I was lonely, thinking of my husband all the way across town, past my parents’ house, past the school where we met and fell in love and became like one, past the cornfields that fed and clothed us, in his home that used to be ours. I wondered what he was thinking about, if he was missing me, or if he was hating me. I wondered if he regretted anything he had done.
And then I heard a mess of noises: metal on the ground, shoes dragging, muffled words. I looked down below and there was Timber, bent over the garbage can. There was a hand over his mouth. His pants were down around his ankles. Papi was standing behind him; his pants were down, too. He was biting his lip and his eyes were closed. My heart skipped a beat. And then Papi moved his hand and Timber laughed and Papi laughed, too, and then they made little moaning noises like they were tasting something delicious.
Even though I had never seen two men together before, not even on TV, not like that anyway, it did not seem that strange to me. It actually made me jealous. I could not have been more jealous if it had been my own husband with another woman. They both could feel the one they loved. I watched the two of them together under the moonlight, moving and grunting and loving, until they were done and it was time for all of us, at last, to sleep. I do not know if they knew I was there but would it have mattered? Their love was unstoppable, too. I went back into my apartment and wept. I cried through the night. I squeezed the ends of my hair in my hands and I cried like a little girl. I could not hide from the world. I could not hide from love. But I could not embrace it either. I was brokenhearted. I was stuck. I was sick.
The next day I started taking Thomas’s money from the bank.
19.
Five hundred dollars a week extra, that was all I was taking. I would withdraw it from the bank and then put it in my oven at home because I thought no one would look in the oven and it was not like I was using it anyway. Five hundred dollars, enough so that he would notice, not enough so that he would say anything about it. It was a lot of money in my hometown. My rent was not even that much. He had to know I was messing with him. What was I going to spend it on anyway?
“SHOES,” said Valka.
PIECES OF PAPER started to stack up in the apartment. The word was out that I was there. Junk mail. Flyers about local events. Every church in town must have heard I was on my own, so I started getting invitations to singles events. The weekly sales items at the grocery store. The electricity bill. Timber came by after work some nights and brought me leftovers that I lived on for days. I stopped talking to my mom so much. She was asking too many questions about why Thomas and I had split. Nothing I told her satisfied her, because all of it was lies. Sometimes I saw my sister. I watched her belly. I waited for suspicious movement. My hair grew thicker, and dustier. In the afternoon sunlight I could see the dust hovering in the air in my apartment and I imagined it falling all around my head and clinging to what had once been my prize, my golden head of hair. I had nothing of value left.